‘Can the dinner wait a while?’ he asked softly, and when she nodded, her eyes wide as she stared at him, he put his arm round her and led her out of the kitchen and up the stairs to their bedroom.

PART FOUR

A Woman of Substance

1928

Chapter Twenty-One

Ruby stood blinking in Foreburn’s beautiful ballroom, her arm in Edward’s. The glass chandeliers shone a brilliant light on the dancers in the middle of the vast room and she could see an orchestra on a raised balcony at the end of the endless space, couches and seats and small tables arranged against the walls where some women were sitting talking and looking about them and others were conversing with their menfolk standing to the side of them. A huge fire was burning in the magnificent fireplace, which took up half of one wall, and an army of maids and footmen were flitting here and there with trays of drinks and canapés. The extravaganza, the people, the sheer noise was overwhelming and she took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Edward had picked her up a little while before to bring her to Clarissa’s party and although she had been expecting something grand – Clarissa never did anything by halves – she hadn’t prepared herself for the dazzling vista in front of her.

But this was one invitation she couldn’t have refused, she knew that, and she hadn’t wanted to. Three days ago the suffragettes’ long campaign had finally come to a victorious end when the House of Commons had passed the Equal Franchise Bill giving the vote to all women aged twenty-one or over, and Clarissa was throwing the party for all her friends to celebrate, including the local branches of the suffrage movement in Newcastle and Gateshead. March had been a trying month – blizzards had swept Britain and the north in particular had suffered as temperatures had plummeted to record lows – but tonight the bitter cold and freezing winds outside the ballroom were forgotten. All was light and gaiety.

‘Would you like to dance?’ Edward’s husky voice was deep and soft as he gazed down into the face of the woman whom he thought about constantly in his waking hours and who tormented his dreams. He didn’t think she had ever looked more lovely; her long coffee-coloured dress sewn with hundreds of tiny crystals sparkling like a galaxy of stars and bringing out the deep brown of her eyes, and her hair arranged in shining blonde curls on top of her head. He was glad Ruby hadn’t succumbed to the new craze of shorter and shorter hair for women; not that it wouldn’t suit her – she was so beautiful nothing could detract from her loveliness – but it would be such a shame to see that silky mass cropped.